


Not here nor there

by AlphaSunSun



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Temporary Character Death, Time jumping (ish), sad levi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 14:04:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6197926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlphaSunSun/pseuds/AlphaSunSun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren and Levi have been 'reborn' and died a hundreds of times now. </p><p>But this time is the last time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not here nor there

**Author's Note:**

> See end if youre okay with spoilers but not okay with how the first paragraph is going

Levi sat down heavily on the bench outside the aquarium. He swept a dry hand over his face and watched the fish bob up and down morosely, trapped in their tank. It had been exactly four hours and ten minutes since Erin died. It was rare the two of them got to live out their lives together from youth to old age, Levi should have expected it by now really. He was hardly ever the one to die first, but just because he’d watched Erin fade away, or be ripped out of existence a hundred times over, didn’t mean it got easer. 

This time around Levi had only been a few years older than Erin, meeting him in University. It had been fascinating to watch as the memories of all their past lives slowly resurfaced aging Erin’s green eyes by centuries in a matter of weeks. He always found it curious how he was usually the one to retain his memories and Erin got to start fresh. It was strange to see the wide eyed 20 something Erin was in this life be engulfed by all the years they’d already lived through, by their history. 

It was hard to say where they started, unsure of what was the past or the future, their timeline for ‘reincarnation’ wasn’t exactly linear and the memories sometimes kind of blurred together. They’d tried hiding things, burring lead containers full of artifacts of there current existence but never managed to find them once they were ‘reborn’. Levi figured they were jumping timelines, slipping into an alternative version of each world rather than traveling up and down the line of human existence. Erin liked to think they weren’t the only ones and that other people were bound by fate like them, but Levi lost that hope somewhere in all the years that they’d never managed to find anyone else that was the same. 

Levi had been hopeful for this timeline, they were both so young and ready to take on whatever the world they were in had to offer. Both from upper middle class families with inattentive parents who couldn’t give a damn what they got up to. It should have been perfect really, they could’ve taken their inheritance and ran, built a house up on a hill somewhere beautiful. They could’ve had their white picket fence and lived out the rest of this life in something akin to happiness. 

They had lived as Danes and Romans, and everything in between, fought in wars beside and against each other. Watched each other die, watched the other scream and thrash as life was torn from them. Seen each other slip away in their sleep, seen sickness and misfortune. 

Levi hardly had it in him to hope anymore, Erin was usually the one who brought that to their duo. This this time though, he really had thought that they would make it somewhere farther along the line then 20 and 23 years old. This life was so mundane, uncomplicated and without conflict. There was no war, no impending plague no duties to be filled other than to live. 

But then Erin got sick, and the slow creep of illness broke him down over the course of a few weeks. His fever too high, and never breaking when it should, he shuddered and smiled when it finally let up enough for him to say goodbye. Neither of them pretended anymore when they knew they were close to death, there was no telling each other they’d hold on or to stay strong. 

It was an odd feeling, another one of those things Levi never thought he’d get used to. A cold brittle thing that settled in your bones and pooled in your stomach, death wasn’t heavy and it wasn’t really all that hard either. It was soft like falling asleep, felt like instead of just closing your eyes you were just closing in general. It also wasn’t something he liked to think about if he could help it. Especially so soon after Erin— just after.  
Here he was though. After. A time that was always the both the hardest and the easiest part about existing the way they did. Levi had lived through after before, had married before, had children and families and found something close to happiness, after. 

Sometimes that happiness came before, sometimes they found each other at the wrong time in life to really be together like they used to think they’d always be. Levi remembered a time he had been simply born too late— had been forced into doing volunteer work by his older sister come mother. She chose the facility their grandparents had been kept at and after a few weeks Levi was assigned as Erin’s caretaker and hardly recognized the man. It had been wonderful and devastating in equal measure to see Erin worn down by age, skin softly crinkled and thin like tissue paper. It was one of the few times Levi chose to live through after, he had only been fourteen and Erin had promised him he’d find him on the other side but ‘not yet’. Levi lived through an entire lifetime without Erin then, but he wasn’t so sure he could stand to do it again. Not here at least, not where their lives had seemed to be full of promise. 

What made after easy, was choosing not to be apart of it at all. It was the easiest thing Levi could do as long as Erin hadn’t made him promise otherwise— and he hadn’t, because he knew. Erin knew that this time Levi really had found hope, that after everything Levi had chose to hang on and try to build something better for the two of them. Knew that it would be cruel to condemn him to living in the ashes of their latest ‘could have been’. 

Levi took a deep breath and moved for the first time in what felt like years but was probably only a handful of hours. With a small sigh he shuffled his feet and pressed his knuckles against his eyes. It hurt to breath, it hurt to open his eyes past the half lidded slouch they’d fallen into since he’d watched the nurse pull the thin sheet over Erin’s face. God, his chest ached and his back hurt from the way he’d been hunched over and the cold press of the stone bench at the base of his spine. He let his hand fall from his face to his thigh and jammed his cold fingers into his jacket pocket. 

Levi sat there for a moment, staring at the ground with his one uncovered eye, letting the tears he hadn’t allowed earlier come. Felt his hand close around the watch he’d collected from the hospital front desk as a part of Erin’s few belongings and pulled it out. It had been six hours and thirty two minutes since he became apart of after. Six hours and thirty two minutes since he hadn’t chose to simply follow Erin into not existing. Six hours and thirty two minutes since the centre of every world he’d ever been apart of stopped breathing— and yet here he was, still greedily inhaling between choked off sobs and clenched teeth. 

His hope for more was gone, and yet here he was. Within the first thirty minutes of after Levi had gone through all the ways he could stop being apart of after. All the ways he already had and hadn’t chosen already. He could crash their car, he could jump off a countless number of buildings, shoot himself, swallow contents of their medicine cabinet at home— but he came here instead, to Erin’s favourite place in the whole city. The stupid bench they sat on after their first date outside the outdoor segment of the aquarium. 

Levi sat there until well after the sun had set, and the tears stopped coming. Sat watching as the crowds died down and turned into a slow trickle of people. Until it was just him and the skinny kid who locked the gates, who came over and asked him if he needed to call someone, but left after seeing his face. 

Some time in the early morning he moved again, pulling out his wallet and unfolding an old photocopied picture of Erin and him on the same bench. One they’d stopped a girl passing by to take. Levi had to ask her to take the photo over and over because every time she’d tell them to smile for the camera, Erin would pinch his side and mess up it up. Something about Erin’s face in the picture and the early twilight had Levi pulling out the watch again. 

Thirteen hours hours and nine minutes since Erin’s pulse stopped. 

Thirteen hours and nine minutes since Levi had decided to die with him. 

Nine hours and fifty minutes since he’d sat on this bench and done nothing. 

This was the first time Levi had seen the sun start to rise after— the first time without being made to stay without a promise. He felt hollow and burnt out from the inside, like he was stuck somewhere between being alive and not. But there was something keeping him here, keeping him from forcing his way into one of the tanks Erin liked so much he could sit for hours staring at the fish-- and inhaling water until he just couldn’t anymore. 

Three months, four days, and two hours later Levi found out what that was— He had spent all of one day in the city before flying out of the country. Levi found himself in a busy market place in Germany when someone yanked him into an alleyway and handed him a photograph. The picture was of a women with sharp features and blunt haircut and a shorter blonde man in uniform, he vaguely recognized two but what caught him off guard was he and Erin standing next to them. A slip of paper and with handwriting seemingly familiar handwriting and a small vial of red liquid were taped to the back. 

“Levi Ackerman of district 0016, Proceed to coordinates 48.690803, 13.148468 for transfer, The retrieval of Erin Ackerman has been successful, we await your arrival.” 

Erin’s hand writing was hastily added at the bottom, telling him to drink the vial and that this would be the last time they’d have to die apart, because it was the last time they’d ever slip through time at all. They’d been found.

**Author's Note:**

> They die in every world they go to, but always end up together later. 
> 
> This time they're found by the survey corps, and won't have to jump through time and die anymore. 
> 
> will probably expand on this + write another version for another fandom of mine.


End file.
